Service Bell
by rese
Summary: Laurie returns home early from Europe but all is hardly well.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: another idea i've had floating about for a while. im sorry i cant update my other stuff - i left my notes at the other house :( Louisa May Alcott owns everything you know. The title and inspiration comes from 'Service Bell' performed by Feist and Grizzly Bear (composed by Edward Droste) off Dark Was the Night. I had this song on repeat when writing most of Pilgrimage but i think it deserves a story and tone all of its own._

...

Her hands were sweaty as she reached across the covers to pull the hair off his forehead. She had not expected this when she pleaded to be permitted by his side. He groaned in his sleep, turning his face into her palm and Jo bit her lip at the sight of his peaceful brow. The doctor had been sure he would pull through but Jo knew the stories, she understood that he was simply comforting her with what she needed to hear.

A strangle-hold had gripped Jo the second she received the news and she hadn't been able to shake the tightness in her chest, not even when she'd finally layed eyes on his shivering form lying twisted amongst the white sheets. She'd fallen to her knees and cried, truly her heart had shattered at the sight - the first she'd seen of him since he'd left for Europe. There was a rash creeping up his neck and she saw it ravaged down further across his chest 'neath the white of his nightshirt. He was frighteningly thin and she wondered that it wasn't starvation that had put him in this mess when she knew quite well just what had.

Jo pulled her hand back from his face to clutch them both tightly over the spread, her knuckles turning white from the pressure. She would thank Heaven all her days for sparing him, for giving Laurie back to her even when she had pushed him away. Jo watched her boy intently as he slept on, his fever passing with every deep breath. She didn't know what it was to care so much for anyone as she did when the Doctor had pronounced the fever over, even if that little needling voice in the back of her mind warned that he might be as delicate as Beth when he was finally well again. She didn't understand love until she was permitted to see him, even in his bedclothes, covered with blankets and sheets.

Jo swallowed, feeling a little ashamed by the ferocity of her feelings as she watched him. What would he say when he woke to find her there? Would he be mad; still smarting from her stupid refusal of him nearly two years ago? Jo worried, pulling her frame off the edge of the bed to sit back in her chair with crossed arms and a frown. How had he gotten the disease in the first place? Now that he was safe from danger Jo finally had the time to consider all these questions that had been pushed aside with the more immediate fear of his death. The obvious answer was more than troubling and Jo had to wonder just exactly how Laurie would react to her presence for he was almost a stranger to her now with his hair plastered to his pale face. Would she have recognised the man before he caught the bad blood in who knows where from who knows what person? Jo bit the nail of her thumb as her legs moved restlessly under her chair.

If she'd only said 'yes', begged him to stay, told him there was another way to forget her than finding the arms of some Parisian with a bobbing head and pained joints. Did he not think to check? Jo coloured in consideration at how one 'checked' their partner for the symptoms - really the whole situation was so far from anything comfortable or proper; how could she think of propriety when Laurie - _Teddy_ man alive! - lay so deathly white save for the red marks across his skin.

Jo pulled her nail from between her teeth to wrap her arms around her middle for comfort. The doctor had said Laurie was progressing to the last stages of this term of the disease and while he spoke with a gentle smile and a lot of large medical words the general impression Jo received was that it was far from over. The young man looked tried and wrung out as he slept, groaning at every turn in his bed and she knew not of his future when he would be so weakened by his suffering.

She'd never thought, not even in flights of fancying over their possible futures in the darkened corners of the garret that she would be here, by his bed as he struggled to endure such a disease she might never have thought of save for the parts of Paris her Aunt would never let her see. The world could not turn itself further on its head if it tried, Jo thought hugging herself as she leaned forward closer to observe his changed form again.

"Please," she whispered through chapped lips - the first words she had been able to utter since entering the room three hours ago. "You must get better, Teddy. Or you will never know-" Jo choked on the rest of her sentence and he moved in his sleep. "Please be well again."


	2. Chapter 2

Laurie woke to the smell of a stale room and as he blinked his eyes open he felt it was surely too bright. Everything ached and his skin felt like it had cracked into flakes of stone but he was alive, and that was something. Turning his head, despite a pounding headache he caught the slim form of someone he did not expect.

"Jo," he croaked hoarsely and the girl pulled her head from her hands to smile at him. She was such a sight for sore eyes, he thought amused by his own pun as she pulled herself from the chair to kneel next to him. She pulled on a pair of gloves he didn't recognise before resting her elbows on the bed. Laurie's lips cracked into a weak smile when Jo took his hand and blinked fiercely, looking like she wanted to say a great deal but something held her back. He ran his thumb over her glove, hoping that such contact was allowed when he was so contagious, assuming the gloves were preventative.

"What are you doing here?"

She gripped his hand a little tighter but looked away. "I didn't think you would mind after... after we spoke." Taking a deep breath she turned back to him again, leaning close enough that Laurie could feel the warmth of her breath with each word. "Laurie, I'm so sorry I wasn't kinder, you have no idea how much! Such revelations I've had, Teddy and now I know - only i fear I'm too late and you're-"

Laurie frowned when she pulled short and sat back, her head bowed. "What? A pox on social order? Jo-" he clamped his mouth shut, clearly upset.

"No, you misunderstand-"

"Hardly," he said lowly, turning his head to face the wall with the curtained window. "I think it would be best if you leave." Beyond the incessant throbbing of his aching neck and pained eyes he heard her stand and shuffle out the room, every slow gait of her step adding to the weight he felt pressed against his soul.

He would never be accepted into her society again, not when the morality of her home so clearly stated the boundaries for socially acceptable and inacceptable behaviour and their consequences. No doubt her father had seeded the words he'd stopped her from imposing and Jo would never see any different from the straightness of her upbringing. Not when respect and filial love were their basis and her stubborn rejection for change married so well together.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise, as his Grandfather's sincere disappointment and tired acquiescence to the situation had not. The hardened lines around his eyes had not changed and the singular kinship Laurie was bonded to would not see the boy cast aside from his position in the household. They had sailed as soon as the secondary symptoms showed and there were steady words and the best of cares taken to accommodate such a foolish mistake that bled across his skin and into his brain. And didn't that cap the climax, that he should lose his mind to this devil's disease?

Laurie closed his eyes and believed that if he should have died, it wouldn't have been so bad.

...

She felt as though her very being was splitting apart with each step away from his room. She should have refused, should have stayed and explained and demanded his attention and understanding that she loved him, _loved_ him and it didn't matter what anyone thought or what her mother's tight lips told her. Jo had come to know what it meant to desire a person with every inch of her life and it meant rejecting any or all social constrictions and expectations she had upon herself and the world around her. There had been a time, a moment where morals breathed their whispering hold on her when she first beheld his spotted hands and sagged demeanor that she should not ever associate herself with this man, this stranger he had become with the Devil's fingers wrapped tightly across his skin and the threat he caused for the order in their world. And naturally Laurie assumed it was these feelings she was trying to express with fear across her brow and serious eyes.

Jo stopped in the hall, ignoring the questioning gaze of the maid who was pulling back the curtains in the long walkway with quiet, slow hands. She should go back, she should pour her heart out to her boy who'd waited, who'd begged her to listen those short years ago and make him know what she now knew with every fibre of her being.

"Miss?" the maid called and Jo pulled her hands from behind her back where they worried.

"Yes?"

"Forgive me, I was only wondering if Master Laurence has woken; it is time for his... medication," the maid coloured at the word and looked away to the window she had just opened. Jo frowned at her and briskly informed the woman he was before she took the stairs with a tense step. It was not right for her to stay when he would be bathed and steamed and pressed like washing and ironing and with that moralized thought she quitted the Laurence house for her own next door.

She would return tomorrow, and the day after and the day after that and see if he couldn't figure it out for himself.


	3. Chapter 3

She smoothed the back of her skirt as she moved to sit down. He watched her unblinking, a hint of uncertainty in the way his eyes followed her deliberate movements.

"If you've come to assuage your soul of mortal guilt you're too late. Old Nick left yesterday."

Jo frowned at his words. "You wouldn't let me explain yesterday, Teddy. I only want to have my say."

Laurie swallowed noticeably and his gaze fell to his fingers as he fiddled, glad that if she should come and one of them have their say he would be seated too. The last time such a thing occured all had not gone well. At least now there would be dignity, or what little could be found in being propped against a headboard of pillows and cushions and as broken as a ghost.

He nodded for her to continue and Jo took a deep breath before gushing. "Laurie, so much has changed since... since last May. You don't know what it did to me to see you carried home, and when you said that you- well my answer would be very different now. I only fear you'd think less of me for taking so long. And I don't - I don't think such things that you said yesterday. How could I!? Oh Teddy, I'm so sorry."

Jo buried her face in her hands and he watched her with concern. She had barely explained anything further but he was no longer so sure she thought him an abhorration, no longer sure he understood Jo as well as he thought. Had he thought so little of her that she might cast away all ties of friendship, that sort of love she professed even before his departure when he had begged for so much more just because of his disease? Laurie coloured in guilt, debating with himself weather to take her arm or not only to realise he had no choice for the sores on his hands would surely infect her and doom her to the same fate.

He could never wish this on Jo.

And yet another, more important question lingered in the front of his mind as he watched Jo calm herself, flushed with embarrassment for her show of emotion when he remained so silent. Did she just allude to... did she almost say she... No, Laurie thought, tearing his eyes from her bowed head to the dark tones of his bedspread. Jo could not love him, as much said so herself a little over a year ago and there was no way she might ever love him now. He was only deluding himself in thinking she meant the answer to his proposal and not to his fevered calls that dismal day he returned - Jo never loved him and never would. She was only sorry that she was such a speachless mess that day and she'd come to know what she would have said. Yes, they were words of comfort, words he knew on some level he wanted to hear but it was not love she was declaring, only apology.

Something inside him that hardened the day she told him 'no' fortified itself and he watched her with the distance he practised in Switzerland.

"I understand, I'm sorry for confusing you for having such thoughts." He said monotonously, pulling his hands under the covers when she leant forward with such earnest eyes. He could not read Jo but he would not fool himself into thinking that way again. He would never be her match now, and that was all that really mattered, even if something he'd only caught glimpses of now filled her steady gaze.

Jo suddenly smiled and he took in the expression with greedy eyes. Any sight of happiness in such a confinement of gloom was too welcomed and he found himself unconsciously leaning towards her.

"You still don't get it do you?"

"Get what?"

"I love you, you stupid boy!"

There was a beat and he felt as though all the air had left his body. "What!"

Jo's hand left his covers to press against his cheek and he felt the lace of her gloves scratch his skin lightly. She beamed at him with open tenderness and he felt himself going red under such a stare. Surely his fever had returned?

"I've been trying to tell you that I love you."

"What!"

"I mustn't be any good at it."

"What..."

Jo sighed, pulling back. Slowly she sat further into her chair, looking more unsure than she had before. "You don't-"

Laurie frowned at the choked end of that particular sentence, reaching to take her hand without thinking this time. "No! That isn't it." He moved his hand back when she looked ready to take it. "Jo," he wanted to say a million things and yet when she looked at him with such open, trusting eyes - eyes he dreamt of when he closed his eyes, even after such a long year filled with things he never wanted to know again - he knew what had to be said. She needed to know. "You can't love me."

"What do you mean I can't - I do! and there's the end of it!"

"No, you don't understand. I'm not- I can't- we can never be together. This can never be."

"Don't be silly. You will get better, you'll be well again."

"No, Jo, there are certain things that can never happen now that I'm- now that I have- well you know." Laurie finished feeling more pathetic than ever.

"I don't care what anyone else thinks, Teddy. And neither should you." She frowned at him, crossing her arms defiantly and he thought for a second how wildly beautiful she was when she was being particularly stubborn.

"Don't be dense, Jo. You know that's not how it works."

"I thought you didn't want a fashionable wife."

"Jo," she was just so stubborn. Could she not see that in no society would they welcome such a union? He himself did not wish it upon her - how could he when she meant so much- and that was the crutch, that he loved her still, and such a confession from her tore at his insides - wanting to do what was right and what _was right_ - he could not condemn her to this life he was now signed and sealed for.

So he did what was necessary.

"What I said a year ago..." Jo paled in her chair at his beginning. "Everything has changed, just as you said and Jo... I can't anymore. I don't love you like I did." He saw her swallow, even though he had protested the very thing only moments ago, she listened carefully, he impressed upon her the false belief that he knew they were best as friends as she had said all along. Disease or no, they could not be together.

"You should leave."

Jo swallowed again, tears evident in her eyes. It tore at him and almost made him spill the truth but she was a woman now, and she simply took a moment before asking about his grandfather and talking of Beth as though their conversation never took place.

Later she spoke only of her devotion to him without ever mentioning love and if it were possible he hated himself just a little more for causing the little waver of her lip as she said she'd be over tomorrow and the day after, whether he liked it or not.

He reminded himself that she should never know this pain and cooly replied again, though pain sliced through him like the fire-ache of this disease, "You should leave."

...

"Why are you still here?"

It had been a week and still he could only look at her with the coolness of a stranger, the only indication of the boy he was before Europe in the pain that flashed in his eyes as the ache in his joints flared, especially his neck as he twisted to see her. It was tragic to say the least, that she should only know him through his pain.

"Teddy, you're my dearest friend," she began, a conversation they'd had every day she returned since they spoke of love and betrothal.

"Never mind," he cut her off, still unable to accept that she cared for him they way he had always supposed. Had she cheapened the feeling by realising only when he lay ill? Jo frowned, crossing her hands tightly as she folded one leg over the other, giving him an equally appraising look.

"You'll understand one day Laurie, and I'll be here when you do." He said nothing but looked down at his sheets, his hands across his stomach, spotted skin less raw than before.

"You say that-"

"I know you." Jo spoke and he instantly recognised that she pulled the words from that dreadful day when she'd broken his heart and started this downwards spiral - she saw it in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw as she watched.

"I really did go to the Devil didn't I?" he swore quietly and she uncrossed her legs to look at her lap.

...

His breath lay hot against her cheek and for a moment, in the daze between awake and sleep she imagined old secrets being whispered and schemes untested. She was no more than sixteen and he was almost fit for college and friendship was fresh and all ideas of romance and courtship but a star on the horizon. It was a sweet thought that was capped only by the slow realisation of true companionship, the blessing of holding another's heart so closely. Jo opened her eyes to the dull light of the room and felt all happy thoughts drowned in the drabness of Laurie's sheets. Groggily she pulled herself from the sheets, feeling her cheek pressed with the crinkling of the bedspread she'd falled asleep on and she glanced at the boy she knew was watching her.

"You can't wait for me."

The seriousness of his words and all they inferred chased away all traces of rest for Jo and she sat straight by his bed, unable to look away as she once might have. "I will," Jo said, her voice like steel in her conviction. She took his hand and didn't wonder when his grip alternated between fierce and slack. He had not been able to reconcile the changes he'd wrought on her world and the feelings he knew her to have before he left, even after three weeks, after numerous conversations and long silent looks, after she spent every day as she'd promised to herself by his bed. The marks of his affliction were disappearing and though the Doctor pronounced him safe for the time there was a change that no medicine or salve might soothe and correct to his original nature. Jo saw something new in the black eyes of her dearest friend, something she did not think she would ever see.

There was no hope.

"You should go."

Jo closed her eyes. It was something he said often enough that the sting had disappeared and a horrid sort of pity had taken its place in her belly. She hated to hear it, hated that he spoke those words with the submission that he could not beat this, that his lack of faith and hope might seal his fate.

She'd long ago forgone trying to reply to such a sentence and instead squeezed his hand, the pink smooth soreless skin against the callouses of her own sparking further conviction that he would get better, he would recover. Laurie would once again be himself and she could speak her true heart without feeling the swell of her throat choke her as she saw into his cheerless gaze.

"Amy has accepted Fred," she spoke, changing the topic to one they often dwelt upon. She'd come over with the news in the morning but Laurie had been sleeping and she daren't rouse him when such peace fell across his features. The aches of his disease left him in such pain awake that the gentleness of his expression, the smoothness of his brow was impossible for her to disturb, even with such news. Jo thought, looking down at him, the spark of interest lighting his face, that she must have fallen asleep waiting for him to rise on his own accord.

"I was beginning to think he'd never ask." Laurie's voice coloured as of old and Jo smiled, grateful her sister could still bring such delight even across oceans where she herself might only bring dismissal. "Is she happy?"

"Yes," Jo replied instantly only to stop and consider, drawing her hand from Laurie's. "Well, I think so. She writes little of her mind and much of the sensations of Paris."

"Paris would suit Amy." He said quietly, looking to the curtains. Jo wondered if he longed to see the outside world he now took shelter from, citing the strength of sunlight against his eyes.

"Seems so."

"I'm surprised Fred would have chosen Paris though, of all places."

"Oh?"

"Jo," he looked at her in mock disappointment, making her inside buzz with happiness at his tease. "Fred's hardly a romantic." She laughed at his frankness and her guilty belief that two of her sisters had chose such dull partners. Feeling silly and giddy she leaned forward to rest against the spread, both hands about his right one unexpectedly intimate. There was a pause, a beat in which if he had been anything but the man he'd become he might have kissed her and she found herself wishing he might take that chance anyway.

"So they will honeymoon in Europe?" he questioned lightly, breaking the spell.

"I assume so, though Amy didn't write much of her plans. I don't expect she will be back this year." Laurie's thumb moved at the tone of sadness that coloured Jo's voice. He knew better than most what Jo's sisters meant to her and she supposed it was only this knowledge that pulled him to sit up and pat the space he made beside him. Jo climbed onto the bed, sparing a look to the bedroom door thinking briefly of maids and tattling tongues before she laid her head on his shoulder and threw her arms about his waist. He was so thin and bony Jo thought, tears filling her eyes when his hand moved to hold her arms against him.

"Please don't leave me too."

She felt his lips press against her head and wished she'd done this weeks ago, whether he was contagious or not for the relief that flooded through her bones brought those tears to fall and she held on to him tightly. All pretense of light conversation fell away and she was Jo and he was Laurie and she feared him dying once more until he pulled his arms around her and held her as she sobbed into his shoulder.

Laurie was silent in his comfort and she was thankful. Should he say anything, Jo thought, her humiliation for such tumultuous feelings would be complete and it was enough that he was holding her as tightly as she held him in that cavernous, stuffy, oppressing room.

...

_A/N: this chap was hard to write, but my roomies are getting drunk in the hall so I can't sleep just yet :P It's so hard to keep these two in character when such altering circumstances have taken place. I guess Laurie's always bowed to societal pressures in the book, and he has always done what he thought right. Jo lives in the moment and she cares deeply for those around her so I guess that's my justification for them :)_


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